Resources
Information for families and health care professionals to promote environment health

Food Matters: Resources

General Resources

  • Environmental Working Group has up-to-date research articles and toolkits to make your healthy food decisions easy. Their Food Scores: Rate Your Plate is the most comprehensive food database available today, and is ready to help guide you to healthier, greener and cleaner food choices. This easy-to-use online food database and mobile app is designed to revolutionize the way we shop and eat. With information on more than 80,000 foods and 5,000 ingredients from 1,500 brands, EWG's unique scoring system rates foods based on nutrition, food additives, contaminants and degree of processing.
  • Growing Food Connections Policy Database is a federally-funded research initiative to strengthen community food systems nationwide, has compiled over 100 policies governing issues as diverse as public investment in food systems, farmland protection, local food procurement and food policy council resolutions.
  • Environmental News Network has daily articles on food and agriculture legeslation in the United States. This site also includes information on sustainability, evironmental policy and climate effects.
  • Breast Cancer Fund has a conprehensive list of chemicals commonly found in food including pesticides and hormones.
  • The Organics Institute has information on chemical-free organic foods, including milk, meat, grains, fruits and vegetables. This site helps you chose healthy organic foods, even on a budget.
  • Kids.gov is full of healthy eating ideas for kids K-12. This includes kid-friendly recipies and nutrition tips.
  • The California Department of Health Care Services created a California Food Guide based on information from the  United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) and Health and Human Services' (HHS) Dietary Guidelines.

 

Recent Articles and Videos

Redefining Protein: Adjusting Diets to Protect Public Health and Conserve Resources. Health Care Without Harm has released a report to guide the complex decision-making process encountered when applying an environmental nutrition approach to food purchases, specifically when reducing and replacing meat on the plate.

Purchasing Considerations - A Supplement to: Redefining Protein: Adjusting Diets to Protect Public Health and Conserve Resources. Health Care Without Harm has released a supplement guide that offers a solid strategy to reduce meat on the menu while generating more health and environmental benefits associated with these foods.

Advice About Eating Fish: What Pregnant Women and Parents Should Know. The EPA and FDA provide advice for women who are pregnant, may become pregnant, breastfeeding mothers and parents of young children to make informed choices when it comes to eating fish and shelfish that are healthy and safe to eat as it pertains to methylmercury.

Fish Consumption While Pregnant: A guide of fast facts on fish consumption during pregnancy from the National Coalition for Infant Health. This includes detailed information on the benefits of fish consumption and what types of fish to reach for or avoid. May, 2016.

The Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen: The Environmental Working Group’s shopper’s guide to pesticides and produce discusses the use of chemicals on common fruits and vegetables. They identify the “dirty dozen”, or the 12 fruits and vegetables with the highest pesticide load as well as the “clean fifteen”, or the 15 fruits and vegetables least likely to hold pesticide residue. 2016 Edition.

Fast Food and Chemicals: An article from Civil Eats looks at how consumption of fast food is linked to higher levels of phthalates, the chemicals used to produce many plastics. April 13, 2016.

Want to know how to make yourself and the planet healthier? This creative graphic-brochure from Sweden focuses on sustainable and natural food sources as a part of a healthy lifestyle. They provide advice on how to eat more vegetables, fruits and berries, and less red meat, salt, sugar and alcohol. April, 2015.

The $11 Trillion Reward: According to this Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) report, The $11 Trillion Dollar Reward, increasing our consumption of fruits and vegetables could save more than 100,000 lives and $17 billion in health care costs from heart disease each year. The report also describes how better farm policies, designed to encourage production of healthy food instead of processed junk foods, will help us reap those benefits.

PRHE Publication: A Point Of Intervention for Health Policy: What food is produced, and how, can have a critical impact on human nutrition and the environment, which in turn are key drivers of healthy human reproduction and development. The US food production system yields a large volume of food that is relatively low in cost for consumers but is often high in calories and low in nutritional value. In this article we examine the evidence that intensive use of pesticides, chemical fertilizers, hormones, antibiotics, and fossil fuel in food production, as well as chemicals in food packaging, are potentially harmful to human reproductive and developmental health. We conclude that policies to advance a healthy food system are necessary to prevent adverse reproductive health effects and avoid associated health costs among current and future generations. These policies include changes to the Farm Bill and the Toxic Substances Control Act, and greater involvement by the health care sector in supporting and sourcing food from urban agriculture programs, farmers’ markets, and local food outlets, as well as increasing understanding by clinicians of the links between reproductive health and industrialized food production.

For more information on pesticide use with food, visit the Pesticides Matter page.

For publications authored by PRHE scientists, click here.